Michigan State Football: Report card for ugly win over Tulsa

Michigan State football’s performance in a Friday night win wasn’t pretty, but the Spartans came out on top. Season openers are never pretty, though.

Tulsa gave Michigan State’s offense more trouble than people expected. Was it Tulsa’s defense being surprisingly effective or the Spartans’ offense just struggling like it did last year?

It was most likely the latter, though Tulsa did have the No. 8 pass defense in college football a year ago. That shouldn’t be an excuse for the Spartans seeing as they were supposed to be a much-improved team on that side of the ball — as all preseason talk seemed to point out — but that was far from the case.

OK, so Brian Lewerke did look fine and healthy, but he had no help from his offensive line, running backs or receivers. That line was like Swiss cheese as there was no time to throw and there were no lanes in the run game.

The receivers weren’t getting much separation in the pass game and the running backs were not finding any room to run — some of that had to do with a lack of vision and just running into piles.

The offense struggled while the defense was elite yet again outside of one drive which should have never ended with a touchdown before half — Kenny Willekes would probably take full blame because of his drive-extending personal foul. But the defense will see some high grades.

How did every position group on offense and defense grade out?